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Why do women make such good leaders during COVID-19?

Editorial / Opinion Piece / Blog Post

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April 27, 2020

Why do women make such good leaders during COVID-19?

Source: Forbes

By Cami Anderson,

By the end of February, leaders across the globe were looking at the same facts: An invisible and dangerous enemy was fast approaching. COVID-19 was highly contagious, unpredictable, and deadly, even with an aggressive public policy response in China. So, what to do? How to prepare and respond? Leaders of cities, states and countries faced an unprecedented test.

The ones who passed this test with flying colors are disproportionately women. This is despite the fact that they make up only 7% of heads of state.

In some ways, this moment in history offers a fascinating and real-time opportunity to understand the consequences of leadership decisions in a high-stakes situation. It all comes down to when governments enforced physical distancing. “If you really want to understand an apples-to-apples comparison of whether or not communities have been effective in slowing the spread, you have to look at three numbers,” says Trish Barrett, a healthcare executive with 25 years in infectious disease control and 19 years in supply chain and emergency management. “The number of new cases per week, the number of cases per 100,000 people, and the rate at which number of cases per capita doubles.”

Click here to read the full article published by  on 19 April 2020.

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By Cami Anderson,

By the end of February, leaders across the globe were looking at the same facts: An invisible and dangerous enemy was fast approaching. COVID-19 was highly contagious, unpredictable, and deadly, even with an aggressive public policy response in China. So, what to do? How to prepare and respond? Leaders of cities, states and countries faced an unprecedented test.

The ones who passed this test with flying colors are disproportionately women. This is despite the fact that they make up only 7% of heads of state.

In some ways, this moment in history offers a fascinating and real-time opportunity to understand the consequences of leadership decisions in a high-stakes situation. It all comes down to when governments enforced physical distancing. “If you really want to understand an apples-to-apples comparison of whether or not communities have been effective in slowing the spread, you have to look at three numbers,” says Trish Barrett, a healthcare executive with 25 years in infectious disease control and 19 years in supply chain and emergency management. “The number of new cases per week, the number of cases per 100,000 people, and the rate at which number of cases per capita doubles.”

Click here to read the full article published by  on 19 April 2020.

Focus areas

Add new comment

The comment language code.

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.